Nine out of ten people would switch to a competitor if a business' website failed to load, according to research. In fact, nearly 53 per cent of people surveyed said they would wait only up to 30 seconds for a website to load before giving up and trying elsewhere. The study also found British consumers waste on average 2.5 days per year waiting for slow websites to load, with some 52 per cent experiencing 'web rage' as a result.

 

The survey of some 1,600 UK consumers(1) concluded that nearly 80 per cent of people said that slow website loading was a major irritation when using the Internet, 71 per cent disliked websites that required specific software to run, 61 per cent were annoyed when images failed to load, and 24 per cent were turned off by domain names which are hard-to-remember.

 

So this is something to think about next time your create a website or if you fall into the slow website category perhaps you hsould think about optimising your pages. This was a report from 1&1 internet which I found quite interesting and thought I would share with you.

 

How is your website performing?

 

That's why over the top flash websites isn't appropriate for most websites. Too long loading time, requires a plugin, and you can't bookmark it.

 

And it's also a reason to use mod_rewrite to clean up them ugly URL arguments PHP and ASP and other languages uses.

heck i know about web rage... i kicked a whole through my wall (plasterboard) waiting for my internet to speed up...

 

spent the rest of the day fixing it so my rage was solved at least.

I always go for quick and easy to load. Compliance helps as well because it makes you stand out to disabled people who often struggle with websites.

Yes, accessibility is a very good point to take note of. Some sites, especially government sites, has been used for not providing a site which was usable for people with disabilities.

 

And for other sites that might not get sued it's still a good thing to provide accessibility support; after all, it's potential customers.

I am definitely one of those people who switch if a site doesn't load fast enough...it irritates me when there are too many bells and whistles in the way so getting to the actual content takes time.

I couldn't agree more - a few seconds too long and I simply close the tab and get to the other site.

I have found quite nice CSS optimiser - perhaps you'll find it usefull: http://www.cssoptimiser.com/.

 

What it basically does it groups the same attributes of the different selectors (ids, classes and other tags) to reduce the space and remove duplicate entries.

 

It does work - reduces your file size quite a lot - but if you are applying some "cascading" attributes which can affect your formatting because of its position in style sheet then you may find that you will have to ammend slightly the output.

Anyway - always remember to make a backup before you proceed.

I use that - it's great - I often write my css the long way as I find it easier to understand that way then I optimise it and simplify it using this tool...works wonders!

That looks interesting. I'll have to give it a go.

http://www.cssoptimiser.com/.

 

 

Thats a nice link, I think I will start using that